Press release
Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, will host the winter installment of the quarterly series Center Days, an all-ages free public program filled with artmaking activities, workshops, and artist talks.
This month’s program, taking place on Saturday, December 10, from 1-4 p.m., is particularly jolly and festive with classic holiday songs performed by vocal chamber quartet Fourth Coast Ensemble, and a holiday art sale from the art center’s Oakman Clinton School and Studio. Additional art programming includes free exhibitions Ground Floor, Joseriberto: BoboDeco, and Regarding the Missing Objects, an exhibition tour of Regarding the Missing Objects, all-ages artmaking with Maria Burundarena and Michelle Nordmeyer, and open studios with resident artists.
Quarterly Center Days are curated by Ciera McKissick, Hyde Park Art Center Public Programs Manager, as a means of introducing the community to the myriad ongoing offerings at Hyde Park Art Center for all ages, interests, and skill levels.
The event is free and open to the public, and pre-registration is encouraged at hydeparkart.org.
The December Center Day programming includes:
Holiday songs Performance by Fourth Coast Ensemble, 1-4 p.m.
Fourth Coast Ensemble offers performances throughout the entire afternoon to celebrate the holiday season, featuring classic seasonal songs and chamber music. Fourth Coast Ensemble is a vocal chamber quartet committed to performing programs of creative and accessible vocal chamber music. With a repertoire spanning Romantic to Contemporary, Fourth Coast Ensemble presents salon-style performances in venues ranging from parlor to concert hall. The goal at each performance is to communicate an atmosphere of warmth, variety, and genuine expression. Fourth Coast Ensemble creates a dialogue that invites each audience member to feel comfortable, as though they were listening to music in their own living room surrounded by friends.
Oakman Clinton School + Studio Holiday Art Sale, 1-4 p.m.
The Oakman Clinton School and Studio community and the Art Center host their annual School + Studio fundraiser and holiday art sale, featuring handmade items including ceramics, prints, jewelry, wearables, and more made by students in house, offering a wide range of one-of-a-kind items that make great gifts this holiday season.
Creative Wing Open Studios with Resident Artists, 1-4 p.m.
These open studios offer opportunities for visitors to come and meet artists working in the art center’s Jackman Goldwasser Creative Wing, including the last chance to visit the year-long Radicle resident artists before their residencies end. Radicle Resident Artists include Regina Agu, Joseph Lefthand, and Robert Earl Paige. The open studios also feature Exhibition Development resident artist Edra Soto, and Flex Resident Bun Stout.
Exhibition Celebrations with curators and artists: Ground Floor, Joseriberto: BoboDeco, and Regarding the Missing Objects, 1-4 p.m.
Artists and curators from current exhibitions offer exchanges on the works featured in the art center’s Winter shows: the ongoing biennial Ground Floor (Gallery 1) brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent from recent MFA Graduate Programs at UIC, University of Chicago, School of the Art Institute, Columbia, and Northwestern to offer a single destination to discover diverse artists whose work demands to be seen and supported. Joseribierto: BoboDeco(Gallery 5) draws inspiration from both 20th century modern painting and neighborhood aesthetics, and presents paintings by Joseriberto Perez that are composed of vibrant, abstract representations of Miami’s landscape and architecture, family heirlooms, and symbolic objects traditionally found in Afro-Caribbean homes, to question relationships between images, histories, traditions, and places. Regarding the Missing Objects (Kanter Family Foundation Gallery) is an exhibition articulated around several absences (the absence of archival items representing a museum collection, the absence of an exhibition, and the absence of a participating artist—Dana Carter—who passed away in the early days of the exhibition design), and spotlights the deep relations between this group of artists and writers who decided to work together in the face of institutional denial.
Dynamic Surfaces: Alternative Print Workshop with Teaching Artist Maria Burundarena, 1-4 p.m.
Participants will use paper as an empty canvas to make vibrant and unique pattern compositions in response to the exhibition Joseribierto: BoboDeco. Through different print media techniques and alternative surface interventions, they will discover how to make stamps with discarded and found materials that surround them to create repetitive modules and free gestures that could be easily reproduced. Guests will use dying techniques to create atmospheres and backgrounds while using collages to layer and reorganize their compositions. Participants will leave this workshop with a new series of prints and a new set of ideas for using everyday materials to print and make unique surface transformations.
Small Change Print Exchange with Print Studio Manager Michelle Nordmeyer, 1-4 p.m.
Small Change Print Exchange honors the mighty impact of a community print shop where 38 artists, students, and instructors participated and created tiny printed works of art. Visitors will see the works on display and can get their hands on making their prints with Print Studio Manager, Michelle Nordmeyer.
Regarding the Missing Objects Exhibition Tour with Curator Ruslana Lichtzier, 2-3 p.m.
Guest curator Ruslana Lichtzier and exhibition artists lead a guided tour of the exhibition to share the curatorial process, the inspiration behind the works on view, and the history of the Jewish collection of objects that the exhibition is derived from.
About Center Days
Onceevery quarter, Hyde Park Art Center is activated throughout for the public, neighbors, and families, with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, artist talks, open studios, curatorial tours of its exhibitions, community collaborations, and music. Center Days are free and open for all.
About the Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of quirky artists to establishing a strong legacy of innovative development and emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections.
For more information on Hyde Park Art Center’s public programs such as Center Days, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.
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